Purva Mimamsa

The first major orthodox philosophical system to develop
was Purva Mimamsa. The other one to follow was the Uttar Mimamsa. The orthodox systems accept the authority of the Vedas.

The Sanskrit word 'mimamsa means a
‘revered thought’. The word is originated from the root ‘man’ which
refers to ‘thinking’ or ‘investigating’. The word 'mimamsa' suggests
"probing and acquiring knowledge" or "critical review and investigation of the Vedas".

Each of the Vedas is considered to be composed of
four parts: The Samhitas, the Brahmanas,
the Aranyakas
and the Upanishads

.
The first two parts are generally focused on the rituals and they form the
Karma-kanda portion of the Vedas. The later two parts form the
Jnana-kanda (concerned with knowledge) portion of the Vedas.

Purva-Mimamsa is based on the earlier (Purva
= earlier) parts of the Vedas

.

Uttar-Mimamsa is based on the later (Uttar
= later) parts of the Vedas.

Purva-Mimamsa is also known as KarmaMimamsa since it deals with the Karmic actions of rituals and
sacrifices. Uttar-Mimamsa is also known as BrahmanMimamsa
since it is concerned with the knowledge of Reality. In popular terms, Purva-Mimamsa
is known simply as Mimamsa and Uttar-Mimamsa as
Vedanta.

Jaimini is credited as the chief proponent of the
Mimamsa system. His glorious work is Mimamsa-Sutra written around the
end of the 2nd century A.D. Mimamsa-Sutra is the largest of all the philosophical Sutras. Divided into 12 chapters, it is
a collection of nearly 2500 aphorisms which are extremely difficult to
comprehend.

Earlier scholars wrote commentaries on Mimamsa-Sutra. Unfortunately they
are lost with the passage of time. The earliest available commentary is
Sabarasvamin’s Sabara-bhasya, which is still the authoritative
basis of all subsequent works on Mimamsa. Renowned scholars Kumarila
Bhatta and Prabhakara independently wrote their commentaries on Sabara-bhasya.
Prabhakara was a student of Kumarila Bhatta. However, they differed, to some
degree, on the interpretation of Sabara-bhasya and wrote
separate commentaries. (Mandan Mishra, the erudite scholar, was a follower of
Kumarila Bhatta. He also wrote a commentary, but at a later stage he changed his
thinking and became a disciple of Shamkaracharya.)

This system out rightly accept the Vedas as the eternal source of ‘revealed truth.’ Thus though it differs from the
earlier four philosophical systems (

Vaisheshika, Nyaya, Samkhya, Yoga
which neither accept nor reject the authority of the Vedas),
a great chunk of
Mimamsa philosophy is derived from the Vaisheshika-Nyaya
duo.

Mimamsa
system attaches a lot of importance to the
Verbal testimony which is essentially the Vedic testimony. Jaimini accepts the
‘Word” or the ‘Shabda’ as the only means of knowledge. The ‘word’ or the
‘Shabda’ is necessarily the Vedic word, according to Jaimini. This
system strongly contends that the Vedas are not authored by an
individual. Since they are ‘self-revealed’ or ‘apaurusheya’, they manifest their
own validity.

The system is a pluralistic realist. It endorses the
reality of the world as well as that of the individual souls. The soul is
accepted as an eternal and infinite substance. Consciousness is an accidental
attribute of the soul. The soul is distinct from the body, the senses and the
mind

. Though Kumarila Bhatta and Prabhakara differ on
issues like the self, the soul and it attribute. The earlier mimamsakas
do not give much importance to the deities. Hence they do not endorse God as the creator of the
universe. But later mimamsakas show a bent towards theism.

This system has a profound faith in the Vedas

. The system
supports the law of karma. It believes in the Unseen Power or ‘apurva’.
Apart from accepting the heaven and the hell, the system supports the
theory of liberation.